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Welcome to my Advanced Ads review!
No time for boring intros.
Instead, let me how you why Advanced Ads is the best ad management plugin for WordPress sites.
Let’s get started right away!
Table of Contents
What is Advanced Ads Exactly?
Advanced Ads is a premium WordPress plugin (also has a feature-packed free version) you can use to manage your own ads, or ads from several networks (AA works with all major ad networks, including AdSense and Amazon).
Advanced ads comes in both free and premium versions, and in my review I’ll cover what the free plugin can do, while also jotting down the benefits you get as a paying customer.
Let’s see what this WordPress plugin can really do.
Advanced Ads Features- What’s So Special About This WordPress Plugin?
Advanced Ads WordPress plugin comes with a bunch of powerful features, some of which are unique and unavailable with other ad management plugins.
#1- Geo Targeting
If you have a multi-language audience, and you wish to display ads to everyone, no matter the language they speak, then Advanced Ads can help you do it efficiently.
Namely, you can set up Advanced Ads to display different language banners according to the geo location of your visitors.
That way, a Spanish speaking person will get ads served in Spanish, while a Brazilian will get them in Portuguese.
This is a very efficient way to maximally monetize each and every visitor of your site.
#2- Taxonomy-Triggered Ad Visibility
Don’t be scared, this sounds complicated but it’s insanely simple.
It basically means you can set up Advanced Ads to show specific ads on pre chosen WordPress tags and categories.
This feature is gold and pure revenue booster, and here’s why.
Let’s say someone’s reading my Smart Podcast Player Review, then I’s want to show that person a banner that’s related to podcasting.
And if I showed them an advert that promotes my Interact Quiz Builder and quizzes in general, I’ll miss the mark completely.
Setting this up with AA is a cinch as you’ll see below.
#3- Manage Unlimited Number of Ads
Both free and paid versions of Advanced Ads allow for unlimited ad management.
So whether you have just 10 ads, or a 1000, you’ll pay the same, or you won’t pay at all if you use the free version.
#4- Sell Ads Directly From Your Site
Advanced Ads plugin comes with an inbuilt smart and automated Ad slot booking workflow. This system lets advertisers easily buy available ad slots on your site, without your direct, active involvement.
#5- Device-Based Display Conditions
Some ads don’t render well on mobile. Do what you want with them, they just look ugly and unattractive.
With Advanced Ads, you can enable that pre-chosen ads are displayed only for desktop users, or conversely only for mobile visitors.
Also, you can enable that all ads get shown to all visitors regardless of the device they’re using to access your site.
Advance Ads will scale down those banners so they fit in and don’t ruin user experience of your site and content.
#6- AMP-Enabled Ads
It’s usually a pain to enable ads on AMP,.
It’s because AMP is designed to display bare bones web pages and ads are rich content and total opposite of bare bones.
Advanced Ads can insert ads into AMP pages without difficulty, and you won’t be losing out on revenue there.
#7- Banner Ad Lazy Loading
Advanced Ads will lazy load your banners ads so that your site’s speed doesn’t suffer.
This will help with your Google rankings because site speed is a proven ranking factor.
#8- Excellent Independent Customer Reviews
Advanced Ads is a high quality product.
Bot the free and paid versions.
This shows in reviews and ratings the plugin has.
For example, at the moment of me writing this Advanced Ads review, there are more than 1000 5-star reviews over at WordPress.org.
That more than 98% of users who’re completely satisfied with this plugin.
#9- Excellent Customer Support
Advanced Ads have stellar support for free users, one of the best among any WordPress plugin.
In fact, if you go and visit the support thread for this plugin on WordPress.org, you’ll see that most queries are successfully resolved and most in record time too.
And if you’re a premium user, you get access to priority help.
Simply go to AdvancedAds.com and click on Support>Get Help.
Help is delivered via email and often done personally by Thomas Maier, the plugin creator and main developer.
Advanced Ads Add-Ons Explained
Advanced Ads Pro is a powerful plugin on its own, but it can also be enhanced with some powerful features to make it a monster of usefulness.
These add-ons are not necessary to buy, but if you need some extra functionally there’s probably an extension for it.
Advanced Ads add-ons are:
- Tracking– track ad clicks and impressions to weed out the losers from the winners.
- Pro– Get this on top of the Free version to be able to place ads anywhere you want and to do automated split testing.
- Selling Ads– this add-on lets you sell ad slots to the highest bidding advertiser, all on autopilot.
- Responsive Ads– this add-on lets you display responsive ads on all devices, and also on AMP pages.
- Sticky Ads– sticky ads “stick” to the screen wherever the user is on the page.
- PopUp and layer ads– display ads or even any content in layers and popups.
- Slider– create sliders to show your ads.
- Geo-targeting– target multilingual audiences with same-language banners ( this feature boosts conversions like crazy).
- Genesis Ads– Display AdSense and ads in positions specified by the Genesis theme.
Unfortunately, some of the most exciting feature of Advanced Ads are locked behind a paywall.
Luckily it’s really not that expensive as you’ll see further below.
Advanced Ads Pricing- What Does This WordPress Plugin Cost?
Advanced Ads come in four versions.
- Free (download it here);
- Advanced Ads Pro-(€49);
- Advanced Ads All Access-(€89);
- Advanced Ads All Access Long Term- (€199).
Note: pricing is given in euros but you can pay in dollars if you wish.
#1- Advanced Ads Free gives you basic functionalities that come with this plugin. I know you’ll love it, but I also know you’ll yearn for more, especially, if you can make much more money by investing into the premium stuff.
#2- Advanced Ads Pro is a tier above Free. It unlocks a bunch more important functionalities and with it you’ll be extremely satisfied.
#3- Advanced Ads All Access tier is the bundle of Advanced Ads Pro and every add-on they currently offer.
With it you can do anything this plugin is capable of doing.
#4- Advanced Ads All Access Long Term tier gives the same features as the one above, expect that you get customer support for 4 years, instead of just 1.
So it’s a 4-year subscription and price difference is only €110 which means you save a lost of money.
To do the math, 4 year-subscription of Advanced Ads All Access subscription is €356, while paying for Advanced Ads All Access Long Term is €199.
So you save €157.
PLAN DURATION PRICE
Free / /
Advanced Ads Pro 1-year plan €49
Advanced Ads All Access 1-year plan €89
Advanced Ads All Access Long Term 4-year plan €199
Advanced Ads Tutorial- How To Set Up Your First Campaign?
It\s very easy to set up your first campaign with Advanced Ads.
Here’s how!
First, go to WordPress plugin depository and install Advanced Ads.
Second, inside WordPress dashboard click on Advanced Ads>Add new.
Third, name your new ad campaign and select ad type.
Your choices are:
- Plain text and code- add shortcode, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, Amazon and any ad network.
- Dummy ad- test ad placement by adding in default banner to see what it looks like on your site.
- Image ad– add in various image formats
- AdSense ad– Use ads from your Google AdSense account
I’m going to go with image ad on this one and I’ll promote HostGator.
By clicking on that ad my site’s visitors will be able to go off and start a blog with HostGator for cheap.
Fourth, select the image from your library.
Fifth, set where the ad will appear and who can see it.
For example, you can set that this hosting related ad only appears on blog posts that belong to that hosting category.
Or you can set up that this ad only appears for users on desktop and not on mobile.
Your choices are nearly endless.
However, the simplest thing to do is to use the default settings, which display the ad anywhere on the site and to all visitors, regardless of the device they use to browse your blog.
Sixth, your ad is nearly ready. Now all you need to do is set ad position.
I’ll pick “in-content” which will show the add after the third paragraph. If you want you can set custom placement for example after 10-th paragraph.
And here’s what it looks like on my post about hosts that offer free trial of their services.
Not bad, but there’s definite room for improvement.
For example, I’d never have my ad stick out like a sore thumb like that. I’d rather blend it in within the content much better.
Advanced Ads Pros and Cons
I think that by reading my Advanced Ads review you’ve gathered this is an excellent ad management plugin.
Its not perfect thoug and there are things I wish they did better.
Read about it below.
PROS
- Various ad placement options– with pro version of Advanced Ads, your imagination is the only limiting factor in placing ads across your site.
- Track Ad impression and clicks- you must know how your ads are performing, and Advanced Ads makes it easy to keep informed.
- Lazy loading– Advance ads will lazy load your banners so you don’t lose on site speed, which is a confirmed Google ranking factor.
- There’s a free version– Advance Ads free is surprisingly feature rich. Basic banner advertising, it’s more than sufficient.
CONS
- Support is not ideal– even though I praised their support, nothing beats live chat which Advanced Ads don’t offer.
- Not easy to use– this plugin is definitely not beginner friendly, and there’s a steep learning curve. It can be overcome though, and relatively quickly too.
- No free trial for pro version- you can’t just try Advanced Ads Pro. Instead, you have to buy it to use it.
Advanced Ads FAQ- All Your Questions Answered!
My Advanced Ads review wouldn’t be complete without an FAQ section.
Agree?
#1- How Do I Show Ads on My Site?
If you have a tiny site with just one merchant you want to promote, then you can place ads and banners manually.
But, if you have a larger site, and especially if you wish to employ an effective strategy where the right banner is shown to the user and right type of user at exactly the right moment, then you need a WordPress plugin.
I recommend Advanced Ads because I’m biased.
I use it on my niche site and I love it.
#2- What are Ad Plugins?
WordPress ad plugins are special tools that can help you manage your ads effectively on your site.
The benefit to using them is that you can automate ad placement and rotation and overall remove 99% of work that’s required with manual banner ad placement.
#3- Is Advanced Ads Free WordPress Plugin?
Advanced Ads is a free plugin with paid extensions you can use.
Free plugin is great for beginners and intermediate users, while Pro is for heavy hitters who really want to extract as much value as they can from their banner ads.
#4- Can You add Video Ads With Advance Ads?
Yes you can.
You just need to choose “plain text and code” ad type in Advance Ads when setting up your campaign
#5- Does Advanced Ads Work With Elementor?
Yes it does.
Advanced Ads works with Elementor and all other page site builders.
#6- Where Can I Learn More About Advanced Ads?
Check out these resources:
- https://wpadvancedads.com/category/tutorials/
- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBBcWLiklJ-mbq9LB6TbkVQ (official YouTube channel)
- https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/advanced-ads/
Concluding My Advanced Ads Review for 2021…
Advanced Ads is one of the rare plugins that is a must for me. I usually refrain and do my best to include as few plugins as possible on any website I run (don’t believe me? use this tool to find out exactly which plugins I use on my site)
Because WordPress plugins can get outdated. They can be a way for hackers to sneak into a site. And they can and will slow down a website considerably.
However, with Advanced Ads it’s worth the hassle of having it on my blog; it’s just that good.
It has transformed the way I manage ads on my site (not this one, my niche website) and I can no longer imagine going without it.
Let me conclude my Advanced Ads review by asking you a question:
Are you going to try this WordPress plugin for yourself?
Remember, there’s a 30-day money back guarantee so you have nothing to lose.
And you could earn more money from smarter ad placements.
Let me know in the comment section below.
Nikola Roza
Nikola Roza is a blogger behind Nikola Roza- SEO for the Poor and Determined. He writes for bloggers who don't have huge marketing budget but still want to succeed. Nikola is passionate about precious metals IRAs and how to invest in gold and silver for a safer financial future. Learn about Nikola here.
This is good stuff…I will try Advanced Ads to manage ads on my website.
Hi Sheriff,
Glad you enjoyed my Advanced Ads review. Yeah, Advanced Ads is the top tier ad management plugin on the market. I use it on several of my niche blogs and it works really well.
Thank you for writing this Advanced Ads review,
AA sounds like an amazing plugin. I use WordPress, server banners ads on my blog can’t wait to check this one out!
Neha,
no problem. Glad you enjoyed reading my article.
Cheers!
Advance Ads sounds like an awesome plugin for ad management! Thank you so much for your in depth review. I’m definitely going to be looking into this as I start to monetize with banner ads in the near future.
No problem Sara.
I’m happy my Advanced Ads review helped you.
Advanced Ads is such a great WordPress plugin! I love how ad placement is automated with it so that you don’t have to set up for each page individually.
Emily,
automation is exactly the point. In internet marketing, you need to automate as much as you can if you want to succeed.
Advance Ads is so amazing! In the past, there was no way to actually target people based on their interest while on your site.
So your general ads had to do poorly because they were so untargeted. Glad to see there’s a plugin that can do this.
I might bust buy.
Hi Nikola,
I’ve been paying for Advanced Ads Pro for a few years now and it is a fantastic plugin. I use it across all of my websites and highly recommend it also!
– James McAllister
James,
thank you for your honest review. I’ve seen your sites and I know you use banners. But I had no idea you were using Advanced Ads.
I agree with you, it is an excellent plugin.